Congratulations to Kite Learning Director Charlotte Wolfe, who just graduated from Bishops Grosseteste University College Lincoln with a Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Sector. Though she is keen to take the skills and knowledge she acquired during her degree and apply them to the ongoing development of Kite, the qualification provides Charlotte with the opportunity to teach in the Post-16 sector (6th form college, FE and HE). Opportunity. It’s a powerful word and something we value highly at Kite. Our Learning Platform gives schools the opportunity to raise standards and gives students the opportunity to take control of their learning.

Charlotte’s research project was, “What is the impact on teaching using a VLE in a School?” a subject that she is heavily involved in with the development of Kite, a new online Learning Platform that focuses on being easy to use and put’s usability at the heart of teaching and learning.

Speaking of her graduation success Charlotte said, “I have really enjoyed working towards the qualification, creating and devising outstanding resources and delivering good lessons. This was the most rewarding aspect of the course, whilst delivering 150 hours of teaching.”

From here Charlotte hopes to go on and complete the QTLS (Qualified Teacher, Learning and Skills Status) via the IFL.

Group Managing Director John Roach commented, “Many congratulations to Charlotte, she worked unbelievably hard to achieve her diploma whilst balancing her work and home lives with her education, well done!”

This is a guest blog post written by Allen Heard from Ysgol Bryn Elian School, please click here to see the original publication.

During the Summer term we finally began the transition to the Kite learning platform from our previous solution. As a staff we felt the old VLE was under used and stale. In addition, it included lots of features that we didn’t use that simply served to clutter up the interface and confuse users, staff and pupils alike. The process of adding content was also troublesome and taking time away from the all important task of teaching.

Since Kite has been implemented within Ysgol Bryn Elian, the whole process of making content available for pupils has been greatly simplified. Since initially looking at Kite we were extremely impressed with the approach e4education had taken in ensuring users intuitive needs were met. Using Kite’s drag and drop technology (browser dependent) staff we’re now adding content in a much more fluid manner than had ever previously been encountered. Couple this with the ability to add different blocks for things such as image galleries, embedded video, customisable text fields allowing for HTML code to be inserted, flash capabilities and a resources block to populate a lesson or course with files, and you have a learning platform that is truly a joy to use.

Courses are easily created, units added to it and lessons within. These lessons can then be dragged onto the teachers timetable to allocate that topic to that class in a specific time slot. The freedom to reorganise and shuffle blocks around on a page makes a refreshing change from the prescriptive norm. Every course can be made to look rich and varied with the powerful ability to add a range of media content easily.

One of the biggest plus points for the administration of Kite is the permissions. Put simply, all pupils see everything, you then adjust for what you don’t want them to see. A much easier solution than allocating specific groups to specific content which gets very messy very quickly. Pupils now have access to the content they need with very little searching.

As Head of ICT I am looking forward to working with Kite further on future developments, I think the relationship they have built with us as a school is one based on the fact they understand our needs and are actively working with us on a regular basis to ensure the vision we have for our learning platform now and in the future is realised.

To summarise, Kite is powerful yet simple to use. Users find it visually pleasing and staff are packing it with content ready for our learners to navigate and explore. We couldn’t be happier now that our Kite is flying high at Ysgol Bryn Elian.

The Little Things That Help A Lot

When you admire a mountain or a glimmering star, it’s easy to forget that it all stems from the tiniest of atoms, the smallest of molecules. At Kite, we love the little things. Every part of the user experience matters, however small. In our latest release of Kite, users will now be able to add photos to lesson, unit and assignment blocks using our drag and drop functionality. It’s a small, simple change that makes your learning platform that bit more elegant.

If you’ve used our drag and drop functionality before, you’ll know how easy it is to add images to a resource or image block. In edit mode on a page, drag and drop an image into the existing thumbnail field. Simple as that. Once the file has finished uploading, it will appear next to the lesson title.

Our developers didn’t stop there. They’ve now integrated a colour changer into blocks too, allowing users to customise the header and background colours. The ability to personalise your learning environment colours is helpful if you wish to maintain consistency with your school branding. Furthermore, in the classroom, the ability to use different colours can help stimulate your learners and aid information retention.

Going Social

At Kite, we actively embrace and promote Social Media, recognising the importance of connecting people. We’re pleased to announce that our team of developers have now built a Twitter block right into Kite. This handy tool lets you pull in tweets from a specific user, hash tag or @ mention. With a live feed option, you can ensure this handy block is updated every second with the latest tweets, as they happen.

Now Presenting…

Delivery is everything. With Kite’s new ‘Presentation Mode’ it’s just the lesson, unit or assignment and the content that matters most. Our development team have created this elegant new way of viewing a lesson that aids engagement and gets rid of all the clutter. With the ability for users to adjust colours and font sizes to achieve the optimum slideshow-like view, this really is a powerful tool that will help make a real difference in the classroom. We can’t wait for you to try it.

In The Know

Want to know a secret? Kite has been automatically keeping logs of all kinds of information. Now thanks to a simple interface, you can have access to the audit log. Filters and search tools make it easy to find exactly what it is you are looking for. As Kite grows, so will the information available.

At Kite we’re really focused on giving our users the best experience possible when they’re using our VLE. In this new release we have implemented new group management and target feature within our learning platform.

We have worked closely with our Kite users to generate ideas and suggestions and took them into consideration when developing the new features.

Before going into detail here’s our quick list of changes that we will be releasing for those who want the key information:

• Staff can now create, edit and delete groups
• Users can now create, edit and delete targets
• The “Group Search” page has been added allowing users to quickly find any group
• New feedback notification system
• Improvements to the student homework diary
• Better handling of quiz results in Internet Explorer 7
• Better support for cloning units with complex structures and content

Group Management

We understand that any type of management can be time-consuming so we implemented a simple and easy to use group management system within Kite. Users are already familiar with the concept of groups within the learning platform, and this information is imported from schools’ internal systems. After talking to our users we realised that they needed a way to create new groups and manage existing groups, so we sat down with our users and implemented one. This allows administrators to easily organise their VLE users for common tasks (such as setting permissions or creating academic targets).

One of the first tasks was to gather requirements from our users and put together an in-house design process.

Once the logic was written up the magic started! Taking the designs and the requirements the group management system was underway. The first requirement we needed to implement was allowing the user to search for groups for easy management. From our previous blog post we said “Familiarity is key” and we now stick to it, we implemented a group search similar to our student search. Can you see the similarities?

But this was only half of the task; we still needed to show the users the information associated to a group. Going back to the drawing board we created a new cover-page that presented group information in a simple layout.

The feature gives the users the ability to edit and delete groups. The user can also change the group name, description and its members (only if they have permission!). Once the group management feature was developed our next feature was to implement academic user targets but we took that feature to the next level and allowed users to set academic targets on a group too.

User and Group Targets

We believe academic targets are a key part of the students learning process. Setting targets can help students close the gap between what they have achieved and what they want to achieve. Users also share our enthusiasm about targets so we developed a new feature that gives teachers, students and parents the ability to create, edit and delete academic targets.

We designed a simple and easy solution to set targets for students and we added a new tab on our student and group page.

Using the simple tools provided, users can search, filter and order academic targets. Clicking on a target loads the target page allowing users to modify or delete the target.

Users can edit the following attributes on a target:

• Progress – What’s the current status of the target? (none, in progress, partially, fully, excelled and not met)
• Description – The description of the target
• Type – Standard or Academic
• Due Date – When is the target due
• Evidence – Add/Delete evidence for a target
• Comments  – Gives the user the ability to discuss the target
• Members – Add/Remove members to a target
• Groups – Add/Remove groups to a target

Target Evidence

Over time a student’s target develops and the progress changes, the ideal cycle would be none to in progress and finishing on complete. Staff, Students or Parents might want to submit evidence to a target to highlight progress. We implemented three different types of evidence that the users could submit: Files, Text and homework submissions.

Files

If you have already used our Resource Block this will be nothing new for you, but if you haven’t, no need to worry, adding files as target evidence is easy using our drag and drop functionality. Users can drag and drop files from the school network (sidebar), from the desktop (if your browser supports it) and even upload files directly to the target. Once the file has been uploaded, that file can be downloaded or removed… it’s really that easy!

Text

Users can also add text as evidence; this process is also very simple, just type your comment in the text field and click “Post Evidence” and we will handle the rest.

Homework Submissions

Users can also search for any homework submission and add it as evidence; this could be a file that has been uploaded or a quiz that has been completed.

Target communication

Communication between teachers, students and parents is important to us, so we developed a feature that gives the users the ability to discuss targets.

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” George Bernard Shaw When considering your choice of a VLE the primary decision-making needs to be based on the needs of the Teacher & the Learner. Usability is a key element when considering things from the teacher’s perspective. If not ‘easy’, teacher use should at least be obvious and where possible have echoes to their day-to-day use of other software

To focus on the teacher, it is crucial that the platform shows itself sympathetic to the teacher’s operating environment
and is mindful of their most precious resource, time. Several LPs don’t even provide WYSIWYG content-creation environments – thereby multiplying 3-fold the numbers of clicks it might take to create an ‘e-lesson’ or electronic resource. Enabling a ‘drag + drop’ resource creation again makes it easier for teachers to grab that video, image or flash resource and place it within a lesson format. Whilst attaching a file is not a process foreign to teachers, anything which short-cuts a process will appeal to them.

The trick in terms of the design process is to make it as easy as possible for teachers to produce content that looks good. The ideal VLE creation interface would have a pop-up designer saying “No! You can’t put those styles / fonts / shapes together you philistine!”… because so many of us don’t know enough about how good design makes such a difference…

Oops! At great danger of falling into the style v substance trap…

Whilst established products work hard to accommodate these requirements, second-generation LP products like Kite – released by e4education in September 2011 – have been designed to make the most of recent technological developments to help teachers design the best resources possible.

This post is a guest post by Steve Warburton of Releasing Success and is part of a mini-series on technology adoption in education. You can see all the posts in this series here.

Been there. Lived through it. Got the T-shirt… and the worry lines… Yes, I’ve introduced a Learning Platform (VLE) into a school… well, several! As I’ve reflected on this process of trying to stimulate technology adoption in a secondary school, I’ve realised that I was most successful when I focused on the core business of the school – the learning and teaching… and therefore the learner and the teacher.

Don’t fall for the ‘con’ of a ‘free’ VLE. I’m not saying don’t choose Moodle or Sharepoint… just don’t think that it’s free! The cost to your organisation will be significant whatever the price-tag. Costs come in hours, days and weeks as well as on the bottom-line on an order form. To stand any chance of making the most of the capital and revenue investment that has been (or will be) made in a LP/VLE, then you’ve got to get teachers using it. That could be for themselves – establishing a search-able resource of quality-assured resources that teachers can deploy in lessons and students can access in those ‘anytime, anywhere Martini’ moments we love to believe take place. It could be for their learners – one school first introduced their VLE as a Revision Gateway for Year 11 students.  Achievement soared, students expressed their delight at learning this way and the VLE had established its beach-head in the school.

Decision-makers must always hold central in their decision-making the imperatives for introducing a Learning Platform. When selecting the LP/VLE for a school there are several key features that should be uppermost in the minds of Senior Leadership Teams. It is tempting to be won over by a solution’s effectiveness as a virtual Noticeboard for students, staff and parents. Indeed for some schools this has been their beach-head, but the danger is that the LP becomes seen as a news / information platform – not something focused on learning.

This post is a guest post by Steve Warburton of Releasing Success and is part of a mini-series on technology adoption in education. You can see all the posts in this series here.

It wasn’t until nearly two decades later as I looked back on a career that frequently featured this ‘early adopter’ trying to spread the word that I actually discovered the definition. A colleague gave me an edition of the book called ‘Crossing the Chasm’ by Geoffrey Moore, published in 1998. Moore’s thesis is that there is a chasm between the early adopters of a product (tech enthusiasts aka geeks, nerds…and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists). Moore reckons that visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations, and he explores the differences and then suggests strategies for crossing the chasm.

Some readers will already have picked up the relation between the Crossing the Chasm concepts and the technology adoption life-cycle where five main groupings are identified.

When school leaders attempt to bring about any change they would do well to explore the subtleties examined by Moore that seek to ensure technology adoption has the maximum beneficial impact. I know of schools where technology-related change has been brought in with a ‘do it or else’ approach, a do it or we’re done for’ message (Ofsted normally get mentioned as who will ‘do for’ you), a ‘do-it-because- Jones Academy up the road are doing it’… or even ‘do it because it’s so obviously the way to go’ vibe.

The early adopters in Learning Platforms and VLEs have particularly succumbed to the lie of ‘If We Build It, Everyone Will Use It…’ Field of Dreams mantra. It is unfortunately, far more complicated than that… as many colleagues have found over the last 6 or so years.

This post is a guest post by Steve Warburton of Releasing Success and is part of a mini-series on technology adoption in education. You can see all the posts in this series here.

John Dewey’s assertion about the consequence of teaching looking backwards rather than forwards, is one which helps drive many of us who are looking to improve the teaching & learning process in Secondary Schools.

This desire is one of the motives that compels us to consider how we can leverage new technology tools to make a difference to the learning experience for students.

When I was at school, the nearest I got to a computer was a sneak peek through the door as the Further Maths boffins (yes, in their white coats) were ushered into the computer room containing the Research Machines 380Z.

Within 6 years (1987) I was back in school as a Probationary Teacher with a BBC’B’ computer in our department area and a Computer Room full of them, using VIEW to write a Sixth Form History Guide and QUEST to manage a database of all the tombs in Peterborough Cathedral! Rip van Winkle was not as shocked as I was!

At that point, a young, committed, ‘do-almost-anything-to-get-an-A-allowance’ teacher, I became an enthusiastic adopter of technology in my classroom … henceforth to be regarded as one of the ‘early adopters’.

This post is a guest post by Steve Warburton of Releasing Success and is part of a mini-series on technology adoption in education. You can see all the posts in this series here.

At Kite we’re really focused on giving our users the best experience possible when they’re using our VLE. We have already had a lot of feedback from users about the timetable and how great the drag and drop lesson assignment is. We have also had some ideas and suggestions from users about how it could be changed to make it even easier to use and to make it a more powerful sharing tool too.

This is the kind of feedback that we love, so we have been working hard to take these suggestions and build them into Kite as quickly as possible. They’re due to be released early in February 2012.

Here’s a quick list of changes that we will be releasing for those who want the key information:

• Staff can now assign a single lesson to multiple periods
• You can drag and drop lessons created by other users
• Lessons are now dragged from the left-hand sidebar
• Users can now see a summary of the lesson, assignments and student list for a given period
• Parents can now view their child’s timetable
• Teachers can view other users timetables
• Teachers are visually shown if a lesson has been assigned to a period

If you’re interested in the detail of what changes we have made and why then read on…

Familiarity is key

We understand that learning and understanding new features can be time-consuming even if you use Kite every day. So we wanted to re-use parts of the interface that people are already familiar with, and the sidebar is one part of the system that everyone knows and uses.

The sidebar is one of the main ways of accessing content, whether that’s via the timetable or through the structured content located underneath the ‘Areas’ tab. It made sense to make use of the sidebar in the timetable too, so we removed the list of lessons on the right of the timetable and you can now drag and drop lessons from the sidebar straight into the period

Making this consistent is one benefit but this also means that you can browse and find lessons created by other users and drag those into your timetable periods too; which makes it even easier to share lessons among staff!

Giving users more information

We now give users even more information about the periods in their timetable. Including what lesson is being taught (if one has been assigned), the time of the lesson and a list of students who are in the class. Teachers can easily remove the lesson from the period if they want to.

If a teacher is working on a lesson there’s also a new “Timetable” button that allows them to easily see what periods the lesson is currently assigned to.

We’ve also made it simple for staff to know if changes they’re making to a lesson will have an impact on other staff who are teaching that lesson too.

Viewing other user’s timetables

We have also given teachers the ability to view other user’s timetables. We have made this process simple and easy to use; you can just start to enter the name of the user into the search box and Kite will provide you a list of matching users as you type. You can then click on a name to view that user’s timetable (including what Kite lessons are being used)

Parents viewing child’s timetable

Parents now have access to view their child’s timetable. Just clicking on the timetable link in the sidebar will automatically load the child’s timetable. If the parent has more than one child, they can select what timetable they would like to view.